1998 Vacation Part II: Church
9/21/1
written by Postwood, Saturday, September 12, 1998
Note: This is religious in nature. All government workers should turn back now. (That's a joke.)
Aisai and I had packed church clothes. What I mean by this is that Aisai had a nice shirt and a skirt and I had a white button down with an Oleg Cassini tie and some gray slacks. We also had appropriate shoes, etc, for those nit pickers out there.
The church that we trusted not to be too far out of line of biblical teachings there was Southeastern Church of Christ.
I'll have to give you a little background here. Generally, at a church of Christ, the bible is all the doctrine there is. If it doesn't say to do it in the bible, it isn't done. If it does say to do it, you do it.
A common movement, not only in churches of Christ but also in denominations, is for the church to try to turn church into a show for the entertainment of the audience. I am diametrically opposed to the "Church Show" mentality. To me, and many other millions of people, my going to worship is for me to worship God in the way he has told me to.
The church of Christ sings a capella. This is based on in the old testament God told the Jewish people specifically what instruments to use when worshiping him and would kill those who went against his word dead. Under the new covenant of the New Testament, there is a good deal more freedom. Not much striking folks dead, but it is there. The only instrument of worship mentioned is the voice.
So, better safe than sorry, when worshiping God, I will only use my voice.
Also, the New Testament tells us to sing with one another, congregationally. To have a choir, not only goes against my "Church Show" disdain, but also goes against the word of God.
Aisai and I showed up for the 10:45 service that morning. The dress of folks was more casual than I am used to. In fact, with just my tie I was more dressed up than the guy on the stage. But I prefer it that way really. There are verses that say that we aren't supposed to dress up too much. Though I doubt you'll hear a sermon on them any time soon.
First odd thing we noticed was that they weren't announcing the hymn numbers. But there was a big screen TV mounted in a wall that had the lyrics and the handout you get on the way in, or here it was tucked in the hymnal, had the numbers of the songs. Aisai and I were like the older woman we sat next to; we scrambled for the songs as the congregation had already begun.
In one of the songs, I noticed that there were amplified voices with the song leader guy. Ladies voices.
One thing that I had not mentioned, is that in the page that I printed off the Internet, the church had said the nebulous phrase "Enhanced use of the Praise Team." Aisai and I soon found out what this meant.
This was strike one by the way. See, if it were people who believed in having choirs in church, then it would be one thing. It would be a church with a choir that sits down. But this weaseling of what they say that they believe in is very low indeed. If you don't believe in choirs, don't put a dozen ladies up in front of the congregation, with music stands to hold their sheet music, and microphones. Granted they were facing the same direction as we were, but they were not the congregation. Only the elitist few had the mikes, sheet music, and the music stands. We weren't equals.
It hadn't hit home to Aisai and me yet. But as we were taking communion, a time at which we couldn't sing as we were taking the grape juice and the unleavened bread, the choir ladies started singing again. And this time the number of the hymn wasn't on the screen. It was clear we were not supposed to sing. But the older members did sing, as did Aisai and I. I think Aisai and I were in a state of denial at this point. We really wanted the church to hold to what it claimed to believe in.
The third strike was after we had taken communion and during the song the elitist choir ladies started leading us in clapping. Aisai and I walked out.
We were very upset. But don't think we were mad. We were broken. The reason why we had gone there is because this was the church that Jule Miller had come from. He is a man who made a very good filmstrip series back in the 1950s, which was converted into a videotape presentation that gives a brief summary of the bible. Excellent, I have only seen part II and III, but they hit the highpoints very well.
I must mention, to the defense of Jule Miller, that he was not on the list of the staff at that church nor did we see him present. I would assume that he would move to a different church if such a thing took over.
We had tried to worship God and take communion on the first of the week. We had succeeded with the communion, but I don't offer "strange fire" before God.